Theme Prompt: [#044] – Personal BubbleTitle: Access DeniedFandom: TorchwoodRating/Warnings: PG / None.Bonus: YesWord Count: 997Summary: The Torchwood archives have become Ianto’s domain, but Jack has always had access to them. Until now.A/N: I give up - this is my fourth attempt at posting but no matter what I try it screws up the formatting!

The archives, more than any other part of the Hub, were Ianto’s domain, and had been practically since he’d joined Torchwood Three, mostly because they were such a mess when he arrived. Nobody else on the team had the time or the inclination to sort them out.

At first, bringing order to the jumble of files and artefacts had been a means to an end, a way of accounting for his frequent absences from the main Hub so that nobody thought twice when he disappeared into the lower levels. That had been when he’d been caring for Lisa, but somewhere along the way it had become a labour of love.

That wouldn’t have surprised anyone who knew Ianto Jones. His sense of orderliness and abhorrence of mess, combined with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, made Torchwood’s collection of weird and wonderful things irresistible to him. Since Lisa’s ‘death’, he’d thrown himself into the task with a will, determined to make the archives live up to their designation.

The other Torchwood members had happily left him to it. They all had their own areas of expertise, and having everything properly sorted and catalogued made their jobs easier. What was the point of having collected all that information on aliens and their technology, not to mention countless alien devices, if you could never find what you needed?

Over time, everyone learned to keep out of the archives and ask Ianto for anything they needed; it was preferable to being served decaf for days as punishment for messing up what he saw as his personal space. Nowadays, the only person other than Ianto who ventured down there was Jack, either when he wanted Ianto’s company (or Ianto specifically) or when he decided his lover had been working down there too long, probably having lost track of time. Today, it was the latter.

Ianto had vanished into his domain that morning, telling Jack he had a lot to get done while the Rift was quiet and was not to be disturbed for anything less than potentially world-ending catastrophe. When morning coffee time arrived, Ianto failed to appear, but Jack found flasks of hot coffee in the kitchen so that was okay. But when lunchtime came and Ianto didn’t emerge to eat with the rest of the team, he started to feel the first twinges of concern. Ianto had been down there almost seven hours. Was he okay?

Jack was kept busy for the next couple of hours because the others seemed to have decided today was the perfect opportunity to update him on their current projects. It was after four in the afternoon by the time he could go looking for his missing lover.

Trekking down several flights of stairs, he reached the main archive access door, only to find a neat handwritten sign taped to the outside:

FILE SORTING IN PROGRESS.

KEEP OUT

THAT MEANS YOU TOO, JACK!

TRESPASSERS WILL BE DECAFFEINATED - OR WORSE!

Jack smiled fondly. How like Ianto. In a way, he was surprised his lover had never put a sign up before, but he supposed by now the others were used to the archives being out of bounds. Trying the handle, he found the door locked. With a shrug he punched his access code into the keypad on the wall. A muted click sounded, and Jack pushed the door back far enough that the automatic doorstop engaged, holding it wide open. Tosh had helped Ianto design that so it would be easier for him going in and out with his arms full. Stepping on the floor lever in the archives, or the one in the corridor outside, would disengage the doorstop, allowing the door to close and lock again.

Jack ambled along the main passageway, hands in his pockets, but when he reached Ianto’s work area he stopped dead; there were neat stacks of files and papers on every available surface, including the floor, and Ianto was busy with one pile, putting it into some kind or order that probably only made sense to him. The files looked to be some of the older ones that hadn’t been scanned into Mainframe yet.

Ianto was so intent on his task he didn’t notice Jack, who decided to see how long it would take his lover to realise he had company. He was still watching when the Hub’s ventilation system kicked in…

The archives themselves were ventilated individually, since different sections required different environmental conditions depending on what was stored in them, but because the weather had been hot lately, the main Hub’s air circulation system had been turned up. As it clicked on, a blast of air was funnelled through the open door, along the passageway, and…

The carefully sorted papers blew everywhere, fluttering high into the air and being carried away among the ranks of shelves. Ianto made an inarticulate sound as he tried to hold down as many as possible, and as soon as the ventilation system stopped again, he got slowly to his feet, turning to pin Jack with his gaze.

The worst part for Jack was that Ianto didn’t yell at him; he seemed to have been rendered speechless. He didn’t need to say a word anyway; the cold fury in his glare spoke volumes, as did the way he picked his way carefully between the scattered papers, grabbed Jack by the wrist, and towed him back along the corridor, shoving him through the door and pointing at the sign on it before slamming it in his face.

Jack winced, looking at the words: Decaffeinated - or worse… After this, he’d be lucky if he got served cheap instant decaf. He wondered if he should have offered to help Ianto collect his scattered papers and sort them again, then realised he’d probably only get in the way. Ianto wasn’t going to be speaking to him for quite some time. As for the archives and Ianto's bed… the words Access Denied came to mind.

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Access denied indeed, in oh so many ways... Jack has always been plagued by the most terrible sense of timing. I'm sure Ianto will come to realise that it was an accident and nothing more. Jack was only concerned for his welfare.